Catherine Gorick

Katie is a first-year PhD student in the Biomedical Engineering Department, working in Richard Price’s lab. The Price lab investigates the biomechanics of the microvasculature as well as therapeutic applications of focused ultrasound for delivering drugs across blood vessels and across the blood-brain barrier. Specifically, Katie is developing a system to deliver genes that promote DNA demethylation to the sites of blood vessel blockages or to brain tumors using focused ultrasound, with the intent to promote the formation of new vasculature to reroute blood flow in the case of the vessel blockages, and to reactivate silenced tumor suppressor genes in the case of brain cancers.

Katie is also an author on a paper currently in press based on research conducted during her first rotation at UVA, which involved a collaboration between Shayn Pierce-Cottler’s lab in Biomedical Engineering and Cassandra Fraser’s lab in Chemistry to develop oxygen-sensing nanoparticles to assess wound healing.

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The Jefferson Scholars Foundation, like its namesake, knows that virtue and talent come from all walks of life. Indeed it is this knowledge that drives the Foundation to search the world over for its recipients.

The Jefferson Scholarship is the premier undergraduate scholarship at the University of Virginia. Scholars are selected through a rigorous selection process that is based on exceptional performance in the areas of leadership, scholarship and citizenship.